Suicide Squad Review

 

There's a reason the movie's called The Suicide Squad and not Suicide Squad 2. Less of a sequel and more of a desperately needed do-over, this scabrous, side-splitting and surprisingly smart supervillain romp is the definite article.

In theaters and streaming already ,The Suicide Squad 2021 springs from the twisted taste of James Gunn. His GoG movies injected weirdo sci-fi and a hefty dose of humor into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but when Old social media quoted got him into hot water at Marvel, rival comic conglomerate DC snapped him up to revitalize another oddball ensemble: the neon-drenched, face-tattooed Suicide Squad movie misfire. 

 This Squad of beta maximum hot blood killers fit James Gunn better than the MCU's Guardians. Freed of Marvel's family-friendly fetters, the man who began his career at B-movie trash palace Troma has found the perfect home for his gloriously bad-taste blend of gore and classic rock; '80s action flicks and forgotten comics; and the most scurrilous of humor and foulest of language. This is a movie where the US government hires a shark that talks like Sylvester Stallone to tear people in half. Like the first movie, the plot involves a bunch of comic book convicts with questionable superpowers being pressed into the service of black ops puppetmaster Amanda Waller, played with dead-eyed steel by Viola Davis. This time they're infiltrating a South American island to take out a newly installed military junta and wipe out a mysterious superweapon ,freaking complications and a lot of blood and guts on the way.

One of the first movie's biggest strengths was the casting, and the same is true here. Alongside Davis, Joel Kinnaman, Jai Courtney and Margot Robbie return from the first film. After the anemic Birds of Prey  Robbie gets to deliver her most full-blooded turn as DC's breakout star Harley Quinn, falling in love and machine-gunning henchmen in a torn frock and combat boots.The newcomers include Idris Elba as exasperated hitman Bloodsport, combining natural leadership qualities with a foul-mouthed antiheroic streak. He's locked in a pissing contest with John Cena's patriotic, psychotic Peacemaker. The pair clashing hilariously as they try to one-up each other in homicidal creativity. Cena is so good and so funny as the uptight Peacemaker (earning a spinoff  he seems like an entirely different actor from the block of wood who fell off the screen with a dull thunk in this year Fast and Furious 9 

I think am starting to love John Cena in Hero turned Heel roles ( WWE should ponder on that ) but his performance was so freaking good it feels like the Peacemaker Character was made for him 

Joining the Gunn show is a fantastic cast including Nathan Fillion, Michael Rooker, Pete Davidson, Alice Braga, Taika Waititi and Peter Capaldi. (And look out for comic creator John Ostrander as an obnoxious doctor.) Everyone is perfect and clearly having immense fun.Gunn's hyperactive camera bobs, weaves and punches at breakneck pace. The movie opens with a savage, and also hilarious, beach assault opening that plays like Saving Private Ryan on a cocktail of drugs. It escalates through inventively nasty action set pieces filled with various jaw-droppingly gory (and amusing) moments to a climax that dials everything up to 11So yeah, it's enormous fun. But The Suicide Squad is far from a stream of self-aware gags in the style of Joss Whedon, another director who crossed between DC and MCU and whose jokey tone in films like Avengers: Age of Ultron and Justice league  threatened to undercut the material.

In contrast, Gunn's jet-black sense of humor oozes from a serious, even angry foundation. This irreverent comic book movie takes shots at very big and serious themes, raging against Western imperialism, American foreign policy and government deception as it indicts interference in foreign countries. Representing this chilling bureaucratic evil, Amanda Waller emerges as perhaps the most hateful villain in the DC universe -- certainly the coldest.In this nihilistic world, Gunn finds sympathy for the devils, inviting viewers to feel compassion and empathy for even the biggest rampaging monsters and goofiest comic book characters. The silliest and scariest are still just people (or walking sharks) with problemsSo rat-chatting millennial Ratcatcher (touchingly played by Daniela Melchior) is invested with genuine hope and heartbreak. And Polka Dot Man's very silly powers are reimagined as genuinely creepy body horror. David Dastalmachian brilliantly channels a tortured psychological torment that lends weight to the absurd character -- while also setting up a Laughing gag which could make you choke while seeing it.Gunn's movie is neither full reboot nor a complete sequel, but instead its own unique thing that just so happens to have some returning character and actors. Its story and characters aside, one key way The Suicide Squad has differentiated itself from its successor- and many other DCEU movies There are two things that James Gunn does better than just about anyone else on the planet: One is making glossy mega-budget superhero movies that still march to the beat of their own drum (e.g. “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2”), and the other is making over-the-top gore-fests so gross they straddle the line between indie cinema and outsider art (e.g. the darkly satirical “Super,” which in hindsight seems like a mission statement). Gunn might be the only person to direct blockbuster tentpoles for both Marvel and DC, but he’s still the guy who co-wrote Troma’s “Tromeo and Juliet” at heart. First we have a premise to set up and a team to build, and Gunn’s script leverages — and subverts — genre expectations on both fronts. Most of these movies tend to start with a mess of unrelated mishegoss before the main story kicks into gear, but “The Suicide Squad” ambles out of the gate with the confidence of a movie that’s totally comfortable in its own skin (even if that skin is a technicolor patchwork of glowing polka-dot-like tumors). Once again the action begins inside Belle Reve prison, where ruthless fed Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) uses the local population as her personal draft pool from which to recruit black ops teams of supervillains in order to do the dirty work that America’s government would rather deny. “I’d do anything to get out of this hellhole,” carps one of the inmates. “Welcome to anything,” Waller replies.

And that’s it. What more do you need? The next thing you know, a long row of weirdo killers are walking toward a military plane in slow-motion and waiting to be dropped onto the beach of a Fictional Central American country That the vast majority of Gunn’s movie is set on a small island helps keep “The Suicide Squad” focused on the task at hand. As busy as this story can be — I haven’t even mentioned Harley Quinn’s princess saga of a romantic subplot, Alice Braga’s role as a young revolutionary, or Peter Capaldi’s turn as a mad scientist with a taste for strip clubs — all but the film’s most superfluous asides pool together in the same place by the end, and each of them adds to the body count from America’s unique brand of “liberation” along the way. It also goes a long way that the (very) big bad is gnarly and sympathetic in equal measure; superhero fare always gets swamped in CGI overload during their third acts, but Starro is light years removed from the murky brown goop monsters who tend to end these movies with a whimper. Even after the protracted siege that’s stretched over the back half of this saga, the final battle that follows makes your eyes widen rather than glaze over.

Given that “The Suicide Squad” only works so well because Gunn was empowered to go a little nuts, it’s hard to get hung up on the bits that don’t pull their weight — any decent suicide squad comes with a few casualties along the way. While Gunn’s use of Harley Quinn is judicious and clever even before she gets to be center stage for the movie’s cleanest action setpiece, the character desperately needs to evolve if DC is going to keep leaning on her, and layering her within larger ensembles isn’t going to work for much longer (the same holds true for Gunn’s counterintuitive needle-drops, which have lost their luster even if Louis Prima is a great pull). Unsurprisingly, Harley is reduced to a vessel for Gunn’s stubborn juvenile streak; dialogue like “I love the rain, it’s like angels splooging all over us” can’t help but sour the batting average of a movie where even the quietest moments are tweaked into laugh riots.fairness to Robbie, “The Suicide Squad” hits a speed bump whenever it slows down to spotlight a single member of the team. And yet, if Polka-Dot Man’s obsession with his mother grows less amusing every time we see her face, Gunn’s commitment to the bit amid the chaos of everything else is inextricable from the energy that elevates this movie above the product it’s selling. Even the flattest beats are worth the feeling that Gunn got to do what he wanted; that Warner Bros. didn’t note this thing to death; that Weasel might return one day when we need him most. And if you don’t appreciate just how refreshing that is, stick around for a post-credits stinger that will remind you of how grimly synergistic these things can be. But for now we enjoy the Gory hilarious superhero movie which has practically outweighed almost all superhero movies in the critics meter scoring a 97% on Rotten tomatoes. It's safe to say that "The Suicide Squad will be one of the best superhero movies to come .

Score : 4.5 of 5